October’s Mattycollector drop is upon us, and this month was one of the largest to date. If you are just a Masters of the Universe Classics collector you got the Horde Troopers, Mantenna, and Lord Dactys. If you are a Club Filmation subscriber add Nepthu. If you have multiple subscriptions, well, I feel very sorry for you! Personally I have two Club Eternia subscriptions and one Filmation. The box I got was huge and the bill was pretty big as well. All this drops a month before Castle Grayskull is supposed to ship as well. Mattel really knows how to stick it to us right before the holidays!

Apologies for the wrinkles in my background. I’ve been battling a family of mice that moved into my basement (which is also my studio) and I had to pack everything up for an extended period of time. Getting this gigantic wallet-raping load of Masters of the Universe Classics figures motivated me to pull everything back out and get reviewing again. Next photo shoot the wrinkles will hopefully be gone … much like the mice, but I’ll spare you the details of how I got rid of them.

Usually around this time of year we start seeing the newly tooled (“tooled” not “tool’d“) sculpts. The early year reuse of the basic MOTUC body pays for the new tooling at the end of the year. Last year we got Rattlor with that new snake body and the year before that was Leech. This month we actually got two completely new sculpts in Mantenna and the Horde Troopers. The Horde Troopers are all completely new, and Mantenna’s only reused parts are the hands. “Variety is the spice of life” is a quote I coined, and it rings true that when we get a brand new sculpt in this line because it really sticks out.

I love to give Mattel shit for cheaping out on figures, and Mantenna would have been one I had almost expected it to happen. I’m happy to say my assumptions were wrong. Mantenna is a single-packed figure with four legs, and every one of those legs is completely functional. They are all ball jointed at the waist, have knee articulation, ankle, and rocker joints. You can have him do a split or kick his leg out like he’s doing a vaudeville dance routine. Having four legs also makes it impossible to fall over when all four feet are down. He will also be able to hold up some of your older MOTUC figure with loose ankles like Wun-Dar and original King Grayskull.

His head is a thing of beauty, horrific beauty I should say. Since they obviously weren’t going to do an action feature they included a second set of eyes so you can make them pop out of his skull. They also made his mouthpiece removable which opens the door for the Kevin Kosse Filmation mouth! I have a second Mantenna waiting in the wings for whenever Kevin starts pumping these things out. I actually love the face we got from Mattel, but that Filmation look speaks to me in a whole different way.

Can you tell I’m gushing a bit over this guy? I can’t help it because I am completely blown away by the execution of this figure. Mattel loves to save a few bucks whenever they can, and we’ve seen it countless times in MOTUC, DCIE, and Ghostbusters. But somebody behind the scenes really wanted Mantenna to be perfect, and it looks like they made that a reality. This action figure is exactly what we needed to show the true potential of the Masters of the Universe Classics line. This month has a ton of cool characters and Mantenna shoots right to the top, not only for the month but maybe even the year.

He’ll have to fight Karatti for the belt though …

Mantenna is currently sold out on Mattycollector. He wasn’t as fast a sell as the Horde Troopers, but he still went quick. With the low production numbers this year I would suggest trying to grab him from Amazon or similar retailers because he’s only going to get more rare.